Desicritics Author: bharath

Twelve Killed In Nandigram Police Firing - the Fate of Nandigram

bharath — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:01:13 EDT

Nearly 50 people have been carried to the hospital in a police charge in Nandigram. Of these 50, 12 have been announced dead. Nandigram has been in the middle of a political storm over sale of land to industrial giants, as part of opening up the economy freeing them from the past history with the left. The village had protested this move and they were kept down after assuring that no such sale was on the cards. As those assurances got thinner and thinner, the people slowly came together in protest. ( Cosmic Voices has been writing about this slow bleed on Desicritics in January.) Yesterday, police had surrounded the region to keep the protesters in line and said "they were attacked first". What happened in Nandigram is a shameful day in the history of West Bengal and for Budhadheb Bhattacharjee.

This is an opportune moment for citizen rights' movements to expose and shame the leaders, to secure justice and to empower the rural villages with a strong sense of community and enterprise, to raise the issue of violence and brutality when dealing with the poor and marginalised, to not only love peace, but to fight for it.

But there will be more hand-wringing, there will be much outcry from all the opposition parties. The victims were poor and much of their blood has flown already. Now, they will set up commissions, make accusations, make political gains, and a few people will change positions in the top. Everyone will walk away from the scene, and left behind will be the dead and their relatives.

Fuel Efficient Cars: How Far Are We From 100 Miles Per Gallon?

bharath — Thu, 1 Mar 2007 00:39:49 EST

Steve Lapp, a professor from Ontario, says the moment has nearly arrived. "I've actually gotten over 100 mpg on some trips in my 2001 Toyota Prius," he says. The secret? He mounted solar panels on the car's roof to keep the batteries charged when the sun is shining. If Lapp, a backyard big thinker, can get triple-digit mileage occasionally, why can't the world's car manufacturers hit the mark on every drive?

While we dream of a what a futuristic world would be like where cars run on water and there will be no power grids, etc., in today's world it is within our grasp to reach 100 mpg with existing technology. Automotive X prize will soon announce a challenge to design a 100mpg car that can be produced in large scale.

Popular Mechanics published a nice article on what such a car will need in its design. In short, mileage can be boosted by an aerodynamic shape, reducing weight, and decreasing friction losses. Here are some interesting bites from that very long article:

Body: Use of carbon fiber instead of aluminum or steel, because of its superior strength to weight ratio can bring down the weight of the vehicle significantly.
Aerodynamics: "We're noticing in the wind tunnel that what you do on the bottom of the car can be more profound than the roof shape. The rear of the car needs to be either long and attenuated or abruptly cut off. A car's wake can have a detrimental effect on the mileage by creating a partial vacuum behind the car, tugging it backward." says Stewart Reed, who chairs the Transportation Design Department at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Tires: Tire manufacturers already use silica in the tread compound to help lower rolling resistance. David Van Emburg, Michelin North America's product marketing director, says we could soon see exotic tires with 20 percent lower rolling resistance than today's models.

Tesla Motors has an all electric 100 mpg car. Both Tesla and the cars based on solar technology remain very expensive.The Aptera Concept Car from Steve Fambro of Accelerated Compositeshave a 330 mpg, two passenger car that can be built for under twenty thousand US Dollars (link: pdf file). Popular Mechanics highlights a possible design to achieve 100 mpg using existing technology.

Unshackled from the constraints of today's technology, one is free to wonder about the future. Such a future lies with flex fuels and the ultimate among them - electricity! The ultimate energy solutions in large-scale will come from wind, solar and hydrogen technologies. On a small scale the power in very compact settings will be delivered by small but high capacity batteries. There is already one simple technology we cherish that hardly use any power: the transistor and semiconductor based devices. Very soon others will be modeled after this. Or so I dream.

Biden Plan for Iraq: An Indian Partition

bharath — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:26:00 EST

Mr. Bush has marched ahead with his surge, leaving behind his republican stooges to choose where their loyalty lies. A lot of the Republicans ended up supporting the surge, even as they disagreed with it in various measures. This gives new meaning to the phrase "quiet protest". The Republican PR campaign has attacked the opponents of "surge" to "come up with a plan".

You will notice the word "Iraq study group" has been dropped from news all together. The Democrats have been in hush hush conversations on their own plan, one that will sound "patriotic and supporting the troops" while giving cover for safe return of the troops. The only detailed plan available now has comes from Joe Biden (D-DE), which I believe will be embraced by all Democrats in one form or another.

The plan is essentially to enforce a federalist structure with autonomous states which enjoy independence in governance but the resources are to be shared through a central arrangement. The resources are shared because almost all oil is in Shia and Kurd territories and will deprive Sunni's of oil revenues. As part of independent governance, the states will be formed along sectarian lines and the forces that provide security will be from the respective communities.

What has not been mentioned in the plan is that many Iraqi cities have highly mixed populations. To form these states, there has be huge migrations of various communities. This smells of partition that India had to experience and it is. Mr. Biden has defended it by saying that this is the best compromise plan to end this military involvement. He takes very little responsibility for the consequence of such a massive displacement and potential ethnic cleansing that could happen. The current violence has been heightened in Baghdad and al-Anbar regions and has not spilled over to other places in the same measure. The Biden plan effectively gives cover for various militant factions to carry on their activities all through Iraq. The death toll could easily rise by an order of magnitude.

The partial response that Mr. Biden offers to this problem is insensitive to the extent of death toll that this will cause. The already happening displacement and movement of people to safe areas from existing areas of violence, according to him, is estimated in the number of a million and a half people. He hopes this displacement will help the people to move within sectarian boundaries that help form the states. Mr. Biden's response (or wishful thinking) has no consideration for the sensitivity or appreciation for the extent of potential violence and killing.

Religious Language: Interpretative v. Literal

bharath — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:34:18 EST

I spent 90 minutes listening to a debate between Reza Aslan and Sam Harris on CSPAN BOOK TV (yes CSPAN!) about religion and its influence in today's geo-political conflicts and conflicts with fanaticism in general. Firstly, I have a particular liking for both these fellows as they have a way of communicating their points clearly, eloquently and with a spirit of generosity, which makes both of them rare.

What struck me as bizarre was that their conversation was not so much about the role of religion as about religion itself. In their discussion almost every understanding each held arrived singularly from an interpretative v. literalist outlook of the religious texts. To illustrate:

Sam Harris points out that Osama of the Mohammad fan club and Jerry Falwell of the J.C fan club have inspired their followers to "martyrdom" and "true" religion by quoting and aspiring to a literal meaning of edicts from their respective religious texts. That every word uttered in the Bible is either a moral doctrine or it is a piece of literature just as any other, its contents analyzed and its merits debated. If it is the inerrant word from above then it should be followed literally. Our discomfort in imagining having to condone slavery or stoning disloyal women is a testament to our rejection of what the Bible recommends as moral actions, and hence of the Bible as a source of morals.

Reza in contrast sees the language of fanatics, even those of religion, as having little to do with religion itself. He identifies religion as the language within which social and political struggles have been framed in the past 2000 years of recorded history. His view is that transcendental and spiritual experiences have outdated scientific forms of inquiry and they have enormous power and appeal to the human condition than that of science. Hence prophets and leaders of the past (and present) understood the power of religious language in framing the social and political context they lived in. The religious fanatics are exploiting this in a cynical way to advance their respective agendas.

So, irrespective of what the Bible says or does not say, it appears that the seriousness with which it is read in a literal way as calling for certain actions irrespective of the prevailing social or political climate conflicts directly with the reading of the religious texts within the social and political contexts and framing and advancement of debate using the language of religion.

Both have their examples. 1) The actions of Spanish Inquisitors could be traced to direct commands from the Bible that ordered the execution of infidels. 2) The use of the Bible by abolitionists to raise consciousness and advance debate in the abolition of slavery.

Until now we haven't had to bring in science. But science, if it has taught us anything, has taught us this: If we have a common experience that does not depend on the region or religion within which it is conducted, such an experience could be framed, explored, and understood within a common framework. Hence we do not continue our scientific researches in our own provincial languages independent of each other, but attempt to bring the science under a common aegis, to promote dialogue and debate.

It then follows that if there are religious experiences that are universal then we should encourage a common language that is free from provincial dependence on one or another sacred text, thus keeping the power of such an experience but also disassociating these experiences from the texts that also carry with them the baggage of intolerance and absurdity.

Why do we need to invent a new language when everyone has their own to describe these experiences? There is no answer. Only this will leave Jerry Falwell with an empty book with nothing left but the most despicable statements. Will people be able to detach themselves from a tradition of a thousand years that is so tied to their identity, their culture and has given them rich symbolism and context to their life in the modern world? Reza argues No.

So we are left to wait for a future wherein we can have such a discourse on religious experiences; when religion itself would no more carry the baggage of literalism and its experiences are no longer tied to one text or another.

As Light Leads Us From The Earth to The Sun

bharath — Thu, 9 Mar 2006 11:55:43 EST

We may know our sun as it goes to sleep:

The sun went to sleep,
in a brilliant night dress,
That seemed to shorten,
as its light was seen less.
Until it had rested,
its weary warm head,
Within the cool blankets,
of moon glow, its bed!
--Linda A. Copp

...or even as it is waking up:

The sun in the morning.
Like a protective mother she rises and brings warmth to everything she touches.
Artists try to harness her beauty, scientists study to find her secrets.
Every being feels more alive when she is there sad when she is shrouded by a cloud.
She leaves each day with a promise to return that is never broken.
--By Bruce Patterson

But how well do we know our sun (this is probably the same problem every parent has with their child)? But keeping our discussion relevant to the sun -- it is so scorching hot that we can't go near it, or peek into it to see what it is made of. But this is not quite the truth.

Even as people reveal their true feelings when they become angry, any physical element shows its nature when it is very hot. The physics of it are this: a hot body "feels" hot to us, and this heat comes to us as heat waves.

The light we see is composed of waves of a particular length (or wavelength), and within them we see variations from blue (40 microns) to green to red (70 microns; 1,000,000 microns = 1 meter). One time when Newton passed white light through an optical prism, he found an image of a rainbow on the white screen nearby. This rainbow is called the "spectrum" of white light. You can also call it the signature of white light. Similarly when physical elements are heated at high temperatures, they begin to glow and emit waves, just like light, and that defines its own charateristic signature spectra.

At the turn of the 19th century, substantial progress had been made studying the signatures of hydrogen and helium at very high temperatures. It was then possible to obtain the signature of the heat waves coming from the sun and they began to show patterns that matched those of hydrogen at high temperatures. This not only gave an idea of how hot the sun is (it's very hot!), but gave us an insight as to what is happening inside of it. The temperature on the sun is about 15 million degrees Celsius at its core.

At this temperature, as the makers of the atom bomb also figured, many hydrogen atoms can fuse into larger elements, thus producing a lot of energy. You see, the total mass of hydrogen atoms is more than the mass of the larger elements that are produced. The remainder is released as energy in accordance with Einstein's theory that energy and mass are equivalent. We knew there was hydrogen there and it was there at high temperatures. The patterns that matched were not exact, and what didn't match must have come from the heavier elements. You can also guess now that sun has more hydrogen than the heavier elements, as hydrogen leaves a heavier imprint on the signature of sun's heat waves than other elements.

So the theory was that hydrogen fused to form helium, and some helium atoms further fused to form carbon, and so on. This theory is now backed by the signature patterns. We begin to appreciate how we have gone from seeing visible light to making inferences about the sun, which we can hardly look at with the naked eye. But, the sun is the star of our solar system. The sun looks bright to us because it is so close to us. So the same story holds for all the stars that light up the night sky.

There are many unresolved questions. Will hydrogen get exhausted? Remember that some energy also comes from fusion of helium atoms. How long will the sun last? How did it come to be in the first place? How old is it? There are many theories, and each one was arrived at in its own peculiar way.

The sun went to sleep,
Within the cool blankets,
of moon glow, its bed!

Lyrical Limerical

bharath — Fri, 3 Mar 2006 00:24:04 EST

friends gods send

walk with your hand in mine
this way brotherhood will gain
in a future so bright
country can take pride
this journey will not be in vain

air eclair

i don't remember jack abramoff
hey journalist, you back off!
I tell you, in honest!
once there 'was' a forest!
no clean air, childrens cough

havana marijuana

marijuana keeps your pain at bay
medical of course, didn't I say?
no side effects, no no
not until well, you know
an elegy comes to me from far away

kicks of limericks

hey you, this is all just limericks
write some and get some kicks
out of it. you care?
have time to spare?
write yours on glossy lipsticks